


I don’t love you

by cian1675



Category: Infinite (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Character Study, M/M, Metaphors, Motifs, Slice of Life, relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-07 06:14:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10353936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cian1675/pseuds/cian1675
Summary: Everyone always talks about falling in love. Falling. A metaphor for how fast and deep the change can be. No one ever really talks about the other side of the equation. Falling out of love. Or is it even really falling as much as just drifting out of love? Myungsoo doesn’t know. All he knows is one day he’s okay with being Woohyun’s boyfriend, and then one day he’s not sure if that’s what he wants anymore.





	

_What should I say?  
Where do I start?_

…

 _I don’t love you_  
_There’s no other reason_  
…

 _That’s all_  
_This is how I really feel_  
_I don’t love you_  
_I don’t love you_

_…_

_–_ Urban Zakapa,  
[I Don’t Love You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfYPKZl7W1w)

 

~~

 

It happens gradually, the way greens slowly fade to yellows and reds as the air turns cold, but there’s still that moment when realisation hits him. It hits him as he’s walking to class, out of the blue, the same moment he’s suddenly aware that the reason his hands are too cold is because his autumn jacket is too thin against the biting wind even though he’s been wearing this same jacket for the whole month since the temperature started dropping. Myungsoo zips his too-thin jacket all the way up to his neck, stuffing his hands into the pockets, although he knows it doesn’t really make him any warmer; it’ll do for now, even if he knows this isn’t what he really wants.

In a way, this action, the way he chooses to continues to class in his unsuitable jacket even though he could easily go back to his hostel and get a thicker one in ten minutes, is a metaphor for how this will go.

 

~~

 

He’s sitting in his room, a little chilly where his blanket isn’t draped over his skin. The school heater only operates at night, and even then only for two hours, so Myungsoo is used to this chilliness, although that doesn’t really say anything – he still dislikes the cold even if he’s resigned to it. A cup of still somewhat warm coffee sits by his bay window, the warmth quickly seeping away but Myungsoo’s too distracted to notice. In his hands is a manga – he can’t remember which series; he just grabbed what was on his side table – and there’s a lump beside him, stirring a little when Myungsoo absently loses grip on his book.

“Ouch. What’s this? Peach Girl?”

Myungsoo turns, sees Woohyun pick up the manga from where it had landed on his chest, careful to smooth over the pages creased from the fall.

Myungsoo reads the title on the cover. It _is_ Peach Girl. He hadn’t realised. “I guess so. Why?”

“Nothing,” Woohyun says, a tiny smile on his lips. “I don’t remember what this one is about.”

“Did you read it at all?” Myungsoo asks conversationally, turning his attention to the window. It’s interesting, how the glass is old and frosted even though it isn’t actually _that_ cold yet. Myungsoo wonders if there was a time when the windows were actually clear – maybe twenty years ago, or however long ago this building was constructed.

“Maybe not this one,” Woohyun admits. Myungsoo is the one who reads shoujo; Woohyun tends to stick to mostly shounen when he does read, and even then, not much. He really only reads shoujo when Myungsoo insists. “Do you want it back? Or should I put it on the table?”

“Table,” Myungsoo says, still distracted by the weird cracks on the window. He realises half the frost is also probably condensation from his coffee – and _right_ , he made coffee, he should drink it before it gets too cold, if it hasn’t already. He takes a sip. It’s barely lukewarm now, and Woohyun would tell him to just toss it, but Woohyun doesn’t know that the coffee is cold, and Myungsoo being Myungsoo just drinks it anyway.

“What’s this about?” Woohyun asks a while later, and it takes Myungsoo some time to realise he’s referring to the manga.

“Hmm? The usual, I guess. Romance, drama, school life. I don’t really know how to explain without telling you everything.”

Woohyun hums absently, leaving it at that. He tugs the blanket closer to Myungsoo, and it brings the bare skin of Woohyun’s arm against his calf under the covers. Woohyun’s skin is chilly to the touch, but still emitting body warmth nonetheless, and Myungsoo isn’t sure if he wants to get closer or move away. He stays in place. Drinking the last cold dregs of his coffee, Myungsoo feels Woohyun drift off, shifting a little to get himself comfortable on Myungsoo’s single bed, and he wonders –

Isn’t “the usual” about falling in love? Isn’t that what people always talk about? Falling in love? That feeling of your heart beating faster as you realise you like someone? That’s the stuff of romance novels, manga and dramas – the things Myungsoo consumes with a vigour no one else he knows does.

But what happens on the opposite end? What happens when your heart stops beating fast for that same person you once thought meant the world to you? What happens then? Myungsoo realises at that moment, that for all his knowledge of relationships glinted from trashy shows and books, he has no idea. No one really talks about it. Or rather, they do, but when they do, it’s always a heart wrenching kind of break-up, the kind where lovers are either still in love and forced apart or where their love turns to hatred and something worse. No one talks about the other kind. The kind where you don’t fall out of love – _violently_ , the same way people tend to fall into love – but just suddenly realise one day that it isn’t there anymore. No one talks about it.

 

~~

 

Myungsoo’s grabbing a snack before the convenience store closes, his socked and slippered feet too cold, slapping across the pavement out-of-rhythm, but he only has five minutes and he didn’t have time to put on shoes. He needs ramyeon; he forgot all about it until just a minute ago and now he’s rushing into the store in the hostel building beside his, face flushed from the cold and from running all the way, but at least he has his hands on the cup ramyeon. That’s when he first hears it. The song.

He’s in the line waiting for his purchases to be scanned, and on a whim, Myungsoo decides to Shazam the song.

It’s Urban Zakapa. A song called “I Don’t Love You”. The lyrics are simple, the melody too, but for some reason, Myungsoo ends up listening to it the whole way back to his room. It’s only later, when he’s back in his for-once toasty room – the heater is on, _finally_ – does Myungsoo realise: he had forgotten to take his change. He doesn’t go back for it.

 

~~

 

Woohyun is handsome, Myungsoo thinks as he traces the slope of Woohyun’s sharp nose with his eyes, links it down to the curve of his plump lips, slightly parted as he naps, and follows it further down to the plane of shadows against his jawline, along his neck where the rest of him is covered by the blanket. There’s no denying his good looks, but more than that, Myungsoo thinks he looks so innocent right now, just sleeping. Or maybe innocent isn’t the right word; maybe the word Myungsoo’s looking for is unaware – Woohyun’s unaware at the moment –

He’s unaware that Myungsoo had a moment of realisation while walking to class that one day.

He’s unaware that Myungsoo doesn’t feel the same way as him now, the way he used to.

He’s unaware that Myungsoo doesn’t love him anymore.

 

~~

 

Myungsoo doesn’t quite fall in love with Woohyun the way he thought he would from romance mangas, but that’s not entirely unsurprising. Real life and fiction are, after all, two different things.

Instead, he falls in love with Woohyun slowly, one tiny bit at a time, the way trees in spring grow, a few leaves at first, sparse, and then one day suddenly, all at once. Maybe that’s the definition of falling – Myungsoo went down a few steps initially and somewhere along the way, the steps gave way to a steep slope, but whatever the case is, Myungsoo finds himself heels over head in love with Woohyun – a guy he never thought he’ll fall for with how different he is from Myungsoo’s reticent awkward self, but he falls anyway. He falls for the smile, the many sets of dimples on Woohyun’s face and how they crease whenever Myungsoo makes a joke even when it’s not a particularly funny one. He falls for the easy way Woohyun moves, the passion he has for everything he does, to always do it well or not do it at all. He falls for the way Woohyun cares for him, in the obvious outrageous gestures of love and gifts showered upon him but also in the quiet way he notices when Myungsoo needs space and is content to just be a quiet listening ear or a comforting shoulder. But most of all, he falls for Woohyun simply because he’s Woohyun.

There’s really no other reason.

 

~~

 

It takes some time – could be a few minutes to an hour, Myungsoo kind of lost track – but Woohyun stirs.

“Hey,” he mumbles, voice sleep-rough and cracked. Myungsoo watches Woohyun stretch, his arms coming out from under the blankets, raised above his head as his back arches off the mattress and there’s a little crack from his back easing into place.

“Hey yourself,” Myungsoo replies. Through the frosty window, he sees the old brown tree outside, and how there’s a tiny blurry splotch of green reflected in his window he hadn’t noticed earlier. It’s already March. His birthday had just passed a while back. The remnants of the small birthday party Woohyun had thrown for him are still stuck on his walls, paper decorations they were too lazy to remove after eating the cake. “How was your nap?”

Woohyun sits up, leaning his chin onto Myungsoo’s shoulder. “Good. It’s always good when you’re here beside me.”

Myungsoo casts a sideward glance of amusement, halfway between skeptical and grossed out. “It’s been a year and you still haven’t stopped being cheesy? Everyone thought you’ll stop once the honeymoon phase is over.”

“Who, me?” Woohyun rounds his eyes in mock surprise. “Never. And I’m not being cheesy, I’m just being honest.”

Myungsoo feels the corner of his lips tug up without thinking. He flicks Woohyun’s forehead lightly. “Gross.”

“Stop calling me gross when you know it’s just the way I love you,” Woohyun grumbles, his lower lip sticking out, his breath tickling Myungsoo’s neck as he cycles through a few different expressions of pouting.

Woohyun’s unaware still, Myungsoo thinks as he watches Woohyun frown a little, his upper lip pulled up against his nose scrunched, a different pout from his usual ones, and he _wonders_. He really does. But in the end, he spies the tree outside from the corner of his vision, the first green leaves sprouting with spring, and he thinks maybe the reason why he still wore his autumn jacket in the early months of winter is the same reason why he’s still here beside Woohyun. Maybe it’s not the most _right_ , but maybe it can be right sometimes, like when the wind stops blowing. Maybe, the same way the trees outside turn from green to red and are now slowly easing back to green again, maybe that’s how Myungsoo can learn to fall back in love the same way he fell out of it.

“Shut up,” Myungsoo mumbles, leaning forward, a hand cupping Woohyun’s face. Woohyun stops talking, returning Myungsoo’s chaste kiss.

It’s a little later when they part, that Woohyun says, “You know, your breath smells like coffee,” and Myungsoo doesn’t get what he means, frowning at him until Woohyun eventually clarifies, “It smells like _stale_ coffee. So you know, I would reserve more intense kissing for later, like after you’ve brushed your teeth.”

Myungsoo’s taken surprised for a second, and he smells his own breath, reflected against the palm of his hand and it _is_ kind of acrid. He makes a face. Woohyun laughs. Myungsoo glances at him, pretending to be annoyed but he knows his smile gives him away. Woohyun doesn’t move to ask him to go brush his teeth right now, and Myungsoo doesn’t bother either, just sitting next to Woohyun, their shoulders touching. Outside, the leaves on the tree sway, the first hint of warmer spring air rusting through their thin stems.

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you fall out of love and you never quite manage to get back in love, and sometimes you fall out of love, but you hold on, hoping the feeling comes back again. No prizes for guessing which Myungsoo chose, lol. This could have gone in a sadder tone, I suppose, though I'm also not very sure what tone this is right now. Anyway, let me know what you think. ^^


End file.
